1832.] Windlass Hall. 529 



primrose or a cowslip, you are almost sure to find a snake in the grass ; 

 if you are fatigued, and think to repose upon a rustic seat, it is ten to one 

 but the seat is metamorphosed into a post, the moment you touch it, and 

 you come rolling to the ground, " by the law of gravity," as your host 

 will probably inform you when you return with torn inexpressibles to 

 the hall, very little in humour for his dynamical disquisitions. Fortu- 

 nately the Captain is a benevolent, kind-hearted man, so that few of his 

 devices are dangerous to life or limb ; but it has frequently occurred, that 

 a visitor, who has been missing at dinner, has been found at a late hour 

 in the evening fast locked in the embraces of some extremely ingenious 

 man-trap, two miles perhaps from the house. A calamity of this kind 

 once happened to the parson, and it has been a joke at the Hall ever 

 since, " Doctor, will you take a walk in the shrubbery before dinner ?" 

 Upon this occasion the Captain shewed, by the haste he made to the 

 liberation of his captive, that his science had not extinguished his 

 humanity. He felt so strongly that it was no light thing for a church- 

 man to lose his dinner, that he actually mounted Archimedes and rode 

 to the rescue at full gallop. Candour, however, obliges me to add, that 

 the piece of mechanism in question was not one of my old friend's " chef- 

 d'ceuvres" and his vanity was therefore not particularly interested in the 

 trial of its efficacy. It was my ill-luck, about two years ago, to be taken 

 in a snare, on the success of which I had heard him repeatedly say, " he 

 was prepared to stake his reputation as an engineer." I lost my dinner, 

 of course, and should have passed a sharp October night in the deer-park, 

 but for a labourer, whom by incessant shouting I brought to my assist- 

 ance, and dispatched to the Hall for the author of my disaster. When 

 that worthy arrived, instead of the regrets and sympathies I expected, his 

 eyes danced with joy, and he was actually in a fever of self-congratulation j 

 nor could I prevail upon him to deliver me from " duress vile," until he 

 had fully explained to the by-standers the mechanical principles by virtue 

 of which I had lost my dinner, and narrowly escaped being frozen to 

 death. 



It is hard to say, whether the guests at the Hall experience more 

 annoyance from the success of the Captain's contrivances out of doors, 

 or from their failure within. His machines and instruments are con- 

 tinually going out of order owing to their extreme complexity ; and it fre- 

 quently happens, that just as "mechanical advantage," so he terms it, has 

 arrived at that point, where it is past the skill of science to carry it further, 

 the machinery stands stock-still, and the momentous functions of the 

 dairy, the laundry, and the kitchen, are suspended whole days together. No 

 person is qualified to serve as cook at Windlass Hall, without possessing 

 a tolerable knowledge of engineering. The Captain has more than once 

 put the following advertisement into the " Times" newspaper : 



" WANTED, by a family residing in Kent, a person qualified to serve as Cook. 

 " To the usual culinary abilities, he must unite a competent acquaintance with the 

 " principles of mechanics." 



The present " chef de-cuisine" is a Frenchman, and either was, or pre- 

 tends to have been, educated at the Polytechnic school : and, indeed, all 

 his science is not too much for his situation, for I verily believe there 

 has not been, for the last ten years, a sirloin of beef roasted at the Hall, 

 without the joint assistance of all the mechanic powers. Never shall I 

 forget the good Captain's look of triumph on sitting down to dinner the 



